The story of Octavius Hadfield, particularly of the years from the end of 1839 to 1869, is closely woven with the European history of the Kapiti coast, now known to holiday makers and residents as the Golden coast. In the same years his influence among the Maoris in the area, and indeed far beyond it, was immense. In 1845, while visiting the region when Had-field was ill in Wellington, Bishop Selwyn wrote of the Waikanae and Otaki Missions— "His station is the key to the tranquility of this district; containing among its population some of the best and some of the worst of the Maori race." During his twenty-four years in Wellington as Bishop and then Primate, and his ten years of retirement in Marton, he was still never very far away from this coast.

Hadfield speaks for himself quite extensively in this story, and his contemporaries also speak. He was an outstanding man, humble yet a born leader of men, entirely devoted to his church and his God yet absolutely outspoken in the temporal affairs of his country, highly intellectual yet competent in riding, shooting, swimming or handling a boat, a man who could not stand by and see injustice done, a man who would fight a seemingly hopeless battle to the bitter end to defend what he considered right. He was on the point of death many times —perhaps this sharpened his faculty for living and logic.